The use of a second language enhances the neural efficiency of inhibitory control: an ERP study

Abstract This study investigated how natural language use influences inhibition in language-unbalanced bilinguals. We experimentally induced natural patterns of language use (as proposed by the Adaptive Control Hypothesis) and assessed their cognitive after-effects in a group of 32 Polish–English bilinguals. Each participant took part in a series of three language games involving real conversation. Each game was followed by two inhibition tasks (stop-signal task and Stroop task). The manipulation of language use in the form of language games did not affect the behavioural measures, but it did affect ERPs. Performance of the inhibition tasks was accompanied by a reduction of P3 and the N450 amplitude differences after games involving the use of L2. The ERP modulations suggest that for bilinguals living in an L1 context the use of L2 enhances neural mechanisms related to inhibition. The study provides the first evidence for a direct influence of natural language use on inhibition.

Download Full-text

Patterns of bilingual language use and response inhibition: A test of the adaptive control hypothesis

Cognition ◽

10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104373 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 204 ◽

pp. 104373

Author(s):

Patrycja Kałamała ◽

Jakub Szewczyk ◽

Adam Chuderski ◽

Magdalena Senderecka ◽

Zofia Wodniecka

Keyword(s):

Adaptive Control ◽

Response Inhibition ◽

Language Use ◽

Control Hypothesis

Download Full-text

Negation of Conditionals in Natural Language and Thought

Logical Investigations ◽

10.21146/2074-1472-2021-27-1-46-63 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

pp. 46-63

Author(s):

Gilberto Gomes

Keyword(s):

Natural Language ◽

Language Use ◽

Human Reasoning ◽

Truth Conditions ◽

Language And Thought ◽

Pragmatic Truth ◽

Natural Language Pragmatics ◽

Excluded Middle

External negation of conditionals occurs in sentences beginning with ‘It is not true that if’ or similar phrases, and it is not rare in natural language. A conditional may also be denied by another with the same antecedent and opposite consequent. Most often, when the denied conditional is implicative, the denying one is concessive, and vice versa. Here I argue that, in natural language pragmatics, ‘If $A$, $\sim B$’ entails ‘$\sim$(if $A, B$)’, but ‘$\sim$(if $A, B$)’ does not entail ‘If $A$, $\sim B$’. ‘If $A, B$’ and ‘If $A$, $\sim B$’ deny each other, but are contraries, not contradictories. Truth conditions that are relevant in human reasoning and discourse often depend not only on semantic but also on pragmatic factors. Examples are provided showing that sentences having the forms ‘$\sim$(if $A, B$)’ and ‘If $A$, $\sim B$’ may have diﬀerent pragmatic truth conditions. The principle of Conditional Excluded Middle, therefore, does not apply to natural language use of conditionals. Three squares of opposition provide a representation the aforementioned relations.

Download Full-text

The Relevance of Moore and Wittgenstein

10.1093/oso/9780198856467.003.0011 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 205-222

Author(s):

Ernest Sosa

Keyword(s):

Common Sense ◽

Language Use ◽

Language Games ◽

On Certainty

Moore lays out his Defence of Common Sense in a paper so titled, and thought by Wittgenstein to be Moore’s best and that stimulated his own On Certainty. Wittgenstein there repudiates Moore’s epistemology and offers a radically different alternative. This chapter presents the gist of that alternative, while inviting the reader to compare that gist with supportive passages gather in the Appendix to the chapter. Wittgenstein is concerned with language games, with pragmatics of language use, with dialectical interplay, with what it is proper to say to someone, and with the effects of context on all of that. Moore in his relevant epistemology is largely unconcerned with such dialectical, linguistic, or contextual issues. This chapter also abstracts almost wholly from them, while remaining neutral on their substance and on their relation to more purely epistemological issues.

Download Full-text

Epilogue

Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198829751.003.0008 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 245-246

Author(s):

Oskari Kuusela

Keyword(s):

Natural History ◽

Natural Language ◽

Ordinary Language ◽

Philosophical Methodology ◽

Language Games ◽

Philosophy Of Logic ◽

Logical Models ◽

The Status ◽

Specific Sense ◽

Bold Claim

In the Introduction I made the bold claim that Wittgenstein transforms Frege’s and Russell’s logical and methodological ideas in a way that ‘can be justifiably described as a second revolution in philosophical methodology and the philosophy of logic, following Frege’s and Russell’s first revolution’. This claim was meant in a specific sense relating to the use of logical methods in philosophy, a discipline where we are often dealing with complex and messy concepts and phenomena, and having to clarify highly complicated and fluid uses of natural language. The situation is not quite the same in metamathematics, for example, and my claim was not intended to concern the employment of logical methods there, i.e. that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of logic would constitute a revolution in this area too. For, while his later philosophy of logic has no difficulty explaining the possibility of the employment of calculi to clarify other calculi, in metamathematics there is perhaps no similarly pressing need for idealization as in philosophy, when we clarify complex concepts originating in ordinary language, since the targets of clarification in metamathematics are systems governed by strict rules themselves. Thus, this area of the employment of logical methods seems not as significantly affected. But I hope that my claim concerning the use of logical methods in philosophy can now be recognized as justified, or at least worth considering seriously, on the basis of what I have said about 1) the later Wittgenstein’s account of the status of logical clarificatory models, and how this explains the possibility of simple and exact logical descriptions, thus safeguarding the rigour of logic, 2) how his account of the function of logical models makes possible the recognition of the relevance of natural history for logic without compromising the non-empirical character of the discipline of logic, and 3) in the light of Wittgenstein’s introduction of new non-calculus-based logical methods for the purpose of philosophical clarification, such as his methods of grammatical rules, the method of language-games, and quasi-ethnology....

Download Full-text

Examining Language Switching and Cognitive Control Through the Adaptive Control Hypothesis

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01171 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Gabrielle Lai ◽

Beth A. O’Brien

Keyword(s):

Adaptive Control ◽

Cognitive Control ◽

Language Switching ◽

Control Hypothesis

Download Full-text

S76. PROACTIVE AND REACTIVE RESPONSE INHIBITION IN INDIVIDUAL WITH SCHIZOTYPY: AN ERP STUDY

Schizophrenia Bulletin ◽

10.1093/schbul/sbaa031.142 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 46 (Supplement_1) ◽

pp. S63-S63

Author(s):

Ya Wang ◽

Lu-xia Jia ◽

Xiao-jing Qin ◽

Jun-yan Ye ◽

Raymond Chan

Keyword(s):

Response Inhibition ◽

Reaction Times ◽

Proactive Inhibition ◽

Stop Signal ◽

Event Related Potential ◽

Neural Mechanisms ◽

Stop Signal Task ◽

Reactive Inhibition ◽

Reactive Control ◽

Present Event

Abstract Background Schizotypy, a subclinical group at risk for schizophrenia, have been found to show impairments in response inhibition. Recent studies differentiated proactive inhibition (a preparatory process before the stimuli appears) and reactive inhibition (the inhibition of a pre-potent or already initiated response). However, it remains unclear whether both proactive and reactive inhibition are impaired in schizotypy and what are the neural mechanisms. The present event-related potential study used an adapted stop-signal task to examine the two inhibition processes and the underlying neural mechanisms in schizotypy compared to healthy controls (HC). Methods A total of 21 individuals with schizotypy and 25 matched HC participated in this study. To explore different degrees of proactive inhibition, we set three conditions: a “certain” go condition which no stop signal occurred, a “17% no go” condition in which stop signal would appear in 17% of trials, and a “33% no go” condition in which stop signal would appear in 33% of trials. All participants completed all the conditions, and EEG was recorded when participants completed the task. Results Behavioral results showed that in both schizotypy and HC, the reaction times (RT) of go trials were significantly prolonged as the no go percentage increased, and HC showed significantly longer go RT compared with schizotypy in both “17% no go” and “33% no go” conditions, suggesting greater proactive inhibition in HC. Stop signal reaction times (SSRTs) in “33% no go” condition was shorter than “17% no go” condition in both groups. Schizotypy showed significantly longer SSRTs in both “17% no go” and “33% no go” conditions than HC, indicating schizotypy relied more on reactive inhibition. ERP results showed that schizotypy showed larger overall N1 for go trials than HC irrespective of condition, which may indicate a compensation process in schizotypy. Schizotypy showed smaller N2 on both successful and unsuccessful stop trials in “17% no go” conditions than HC, while no group difference was found in “33% no go” conditions for stop trials, which may indicate impaired error processing. Discussion These results suggested that schizotypy tended to be impaired in both proactive control and reactive control processes.

Download Full-text

Political Language and Political Reality

Political Science and Politics ◽

10.1017/s1049096500021247 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 18 (01) ◽

pp. 10-19 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Murray Edelman

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Language Use ◽

Social World ◽

Language Games ◽

Social Worlds ◽

Political Language ◽

Logical Positivist ◽

Linguistic Turn ◽

Political Reality ◽

The Social

The most incisive twentieth century students of language converge from different premises on the conclusion that language is the key creator of the social worlds people experience, and they agree as well that language cannot usefully be understood as a tool for describing an objective reality. For the later Wittgenstein there are no essences, only language games. Chomsky analyzes the sense in which grammar is generative. For Derrida all language is performative, a form of action that undermines its own presuppositions. Foucault sees language as antedating and constructing subjectivity. The “linguistic turn” in twentieth century philosophy, social psychology, and literary theory entails an intellectual ferment that raises fundamental questions about a great deal of mainstream political science, and especially about its logical positivist premises.While the writers just mentioned analyze various senses in which language use is an aspect of creativity, those who focus upon specifically political language are chiefly concerned with its capacity to reflect ideology, mystify, and distort. The more perspicacious of them deny that an undistorting language is possible in a social world marked by inequalities in resources and status, though the notion of an undistorted language can be useful as an evocation of an ideal benchmark. The emphasis upon political language as distorting or mystifying is a key theme in Lasswell and Orwell, as it is in Habermas, Osgood, Ellul, Vygotsky, Enzensberger, Bennett, and Shapiro.

Download Full-text